CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS, HYPOTHESE
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understand how modern state, especially liberal political theory is implicated in the jurisdiction of colonialism, it is even more important to determine whether this complex tradition of thought might provide space for the contemporary aspirations of indigenous peoples. Typically, these have included claims for the return of traditional lands, the preservation of culture, and the right as well as the means to exercise effective self-government. Indigenous peoples’ claim to prior and continued
sovereignty over their territories question the source and legitimacy of state authority.
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS, HYPOTHESE
The Atayal people have protested throughout the Nan’ao River basin against the establishment of mines and cement factories on traditional indigenous territory for more than 60 years. External development interests destroy the local environment and deprive local people of the resources on which they previously depended. However, transformations largely aid mining projects and further exacerbate poverty, inequality, and the exploitation of Atayal people. In order to comprehend the embedded historical and political developmental issues, my research set out to explore the embedded colonial history that Atayal peoples confront when faced with mega-resource extraction. This happens in spite of international charters, domestic legislation, and indigenous social movements.
I further questioned that sovereignty is by no means an uncontested concept even within dominant political theory. The nineteenth-century idea of sovereignty may have run its course; it is not natural, nor fully legitimate. It reflects a certain
understanding of power and authority, rooted in a particular, historically determined
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configuration of social relations and public space. As socio-historical conditions change, does sovereignty remain a satisfactory political objective? A paradox exists between the actual practices of indigenous nations’ sovereignty and our modern yet outdated concept of state sovereignty. Underlying this problem are the complex issues of translating between cultures. It is research that exposes us to different sets of values, concepts of space, and relationships with land, subjectivity between nations, and competing theories. This research delves into macro and micro level as well as the historical pattern of the extractive development.
Macro level: Inter-national policy toward the land
1. How does state and development institutions make the land ‘empty’ through the legal and political manoeuver?
2. Why the collaborations among governments and corporations can not enhance social well-being of the indigenous community through good governance?
3. Why is the firm-centered Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR3) cannot be expected to bring about long-term, transformative change needed to address multi-actor and system wide issue?
HYPOTHESIS:
3 CSR is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life if the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.
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The large mining companies are protected by its economic capacity and national legal status. Development institutions tried many forms of interventions: agrarian reforms, resettlement programs, National Forestry Survey Project, privatization of land. The implementation of many of these interventions was mixed.
Common perception is held by the governments and corporations that extractive activity can enhance the social well-being of the Atayal people by offering the job, promoting national economic development. Nevertheless, the research voiced concern over their claim. From the research finding, the study asserts that if the main aim of a development institution is to alleviate poverty, it is clear that the issues of land tenure and land titling in the context of indigenous peoples cannot be overlooked. Those land rights are the significant instruments to take people out of poverty and a major source of economic growth for the indigenous peoples.
The study will reconstruct the cycle: state permissiveness, mining concession, to the massive development. In the state permissiveness, the research analyzes national legal and institutional framework. State’s perception of the ‘empty land’ legitimizes the successive governments to concede the lands to mining company, granting the mining company to establish itself even in the conserved forest in order to explore deposits. Eventually, the land is under the massive development that has negative impacts culturally and environmentally to the Atayal people.
Micro level: the community perspectives toward the ‘good governance’
1. How do small relatively powerless Atayal groups fare in negotiations with miners
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and the state?
2. How does the Atayal people perceive that the mining field is entirely overlapped within their traditional territory?
HYPOTHESIS:
A major paradox here is that private property rights is not extended to aboriginal owners of property because this property is held under community common property regimes that make negotiation for land use more administratively complex rather than individualized title.
According to the report of International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) and the Bureau of Mine (R.O.C), both institution claims that to improve the
governance, it is essential to improve the mechanism of political participation and transparency. However, the Atayal of Nan’ao traditional value of reciprocity, communalism and collective action play the critical role to refute the statement.
Historical Pattern of the Colonization:
Many indigenous writers have questioned whether sovereignty is an appropriate concept with which to represent the forms of indigenous governance and relation to the land. Underlying this problem are the complex issues of cross-cultural translation.
From land deprivation on the colonialism, nationalization of the lands, collective relocation of the Atayal people to the introduction of the neo-liberalism, the demands of return the lands, declaring that “Indigenous people have the right of
self-determination for their own future over the territory”. The Research question:
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Sovereignty is by no mean an uncontested concept even within current political theory: does it apply only to state? Or can it be applied to peoples pre-existing and independently-governed indigenous people who exercise their sovereignty along with modern state government?
These are the key questions are what this study poses. To answer these questions, this study probes into the cases of indigenous communities in the Nan’ao. The case study is based on interviews with key informant and focus group discussions that the authors held during their field visits between 2016 and 2017, as well as an analysis of published and unpublished documents. The case study illustrates the dynamics between and among the corporates and state, and examines how Atayal people in Nan’ao are affected by extractive activities.